Kalviya? Selvama? Veerama?

After a series of experiences in my life and a slew of articles in Sivaji, I thought I will put down my thoughts on a more serious issue. The title must tell you what I am going to talk about. Is it education, wealth or courage that determines who you are today? Which is greater than the other?

There have been discussions by people greater than me and even a movie acted by veterans on the same subject. The outcome has always been that all are equal and that one cannot survive without the other. The reason I am writing this article is simple – I differ. Read on if you want to know what I think on this.

I have always loved Darwin’s origin of species. The point I love most in it is Struggle For Survival and Survival Of The Fittest. Thats the law of the planet. Only, the criteria for fitness has varied through time. When man first came into this earth as a new species, he was crude and behaved mostly like the other creatures. Fitness then was based on power. The one who had courage and could overpower the rest ruled the place. Then, his brain started developing and he found this new ability to think interesting. He began to think and gain knowledge. This led to civilization and there was a time when knowledge was power. He who had maximum brains and could plot the best strategies ruled the planet. Then, man started using his brain to amass wealth. Now, we live in an age where wealth is power. He who is wealthy rules the planet. All the learned and the courageousness must serve he who is wealthy.

Paisa mein paramathma hei. Kaase dhaan kadavuladaa. Perhaps this is the reason we worship money in the form of Goddess Lakshmi.

Whether or not you can take it with you when you die, you need it when you are alive. Some say that money can buy you a home and not happiness. At least it can buy you a home. Without it, you will be homeless in addition to being unhappy. Wealth will earn you respect; without it, even people whom you have been associated with for a long time wont bother about you.

The rupee speaks an entirely different language. You need it to buy you an identity – from birth certificates to passports. You need it when you are alive to buy food, education, have a decent marriage and to support your children. After death, it is most needed to get a respectable funeral and to buy the death certificate. Gone are the days when you used coins to identify with a civilization. No one has time for such unproductive stuff.

The way society is today, currency is king. As has already been said many times by many people, Haves have and the HaveNots have not. In simpler terms, rich get richer, poor get poorer. No longer are people just interested in earning for livelihood. Today, you need to support your children until higher education. You need to have vacations, a neat home, a good collection of articles and clothes. If you earn enough just to make ends meet, you are poor. If you can make another person meet his ends with a contribution from your salary, you are one among the persons getting richer. With CEOs earning a country’s GDP as annual salary, what else do you expect? No amount is ever enough. All work that we do must be focussed on earning money. [I, for one, believe in making money by ethical means only, so dont get me wrong on that.] In MNCs, work that is not linked to dollars is called unproductive. I am writing this blog from my company computer. This is unproductive because it doesnt earn my company dollars. If people paid my company 2 cents each for reading my blog, it is productive.

Like it or not, thats how society is. Far from cribbing about this fact, a sensible thing to do would to accept it and learn to live with it. That is, make yourself fit for survival. As I already said, its the law of nature and no one on earth has the capacity to change that. If you dont make yourself fit, nature finds its own way to eliminate you. A herd of buffaloes is only as fast as the slowest one. Nature has it that when a hungry lioness chases the herd, the slowest is killed, thereby enabling the herd to move faster, not to mention the lioness and her family survives. All efforts must be therefore spent on leading the pack, in today’s world, earning more money than others.

I am not undermining the importance of education or courage or family. If you were alone with all the wealth in the world, you still wouldnt have anything. You need to have family, friends and relatives with you. They are more important than money for sure. You need to have a bit of education and a bit of courage. But along with this, you need to have hot cash and that in large amounts. Thats what will keep your family happy. In their happiness only lies yours. 🙂